Artisan Radio Relaunch

Alright! The audio is coming through bold on my laptop speakers. Ragtime, Hi di hidi ho..

You may have already mentioned, but what's driving the female announcers voice?

I use Text to Speech software - Alive Text to Speech.  I had to search high and low for a good Voice.  It's not perfect, but sounds reasonable.  You can spend a lot of money for Voices that don't sound as good (I purchased it almost 10 years ago, before TTS became popular, and it was inexpensive at the time).

I had to go through some contortions to make it all work with Zara - if you're interested, fire me an e-mail (through the Contact button in the Forum) and I can give you the details.

Sounds good but also liked what you were doing before.

Mark

I jotted the stream address so it can be used to feed KHZ AM 1640 the Indoor Antenna Experimental Station due to launch this spring.

Cross-border relations are looking good.

Congrats Artisan! I'm in the process of rebuilding my AM as well with the recent aquisition of a rangemaster/inovonics/aphex pair. There's also some EBS gear in the mix I might toss in the airchain.

Seems a vaque recallection of you explaining the TTS before, years ago, maybe.. I was wondering if it was the "Talking Dj" script that Ocho had created ( http://ibmgeek.shacknet.us/ocho/ ). Apparently not.

@RichPowers - no, it uses the Windows Scheduler, along with some custom scripts and the Alive TTS command line interface.  It's not quite perfect, as there's a race condition that sometimes occurs and the song title is incorrect - it happens infrequently so I've left it in the past, but I'm currently working on fixing that as well.  There's a lot of what computer guys call 'magic' in the process, but it does work.

@Mighty1650 - I'm no longer using BETS-1 to broadcast on FM.  I use an RSS210/FCC Part 15 certified FM transmitter to relay my signal around the house and immediate yard.  I might bump up the signal with a BETS-1 transmitter once I get the entire station going (i.e., full playlist of songs, a schedule of classical shows, etc. - it's the programming that takes the time).

@Mark - I liked what I was doing before as well, but I just didn't want to worry about copyright licensing any more, particularly since the writing is on the wall for Canada to follow suit with the U.S., particularly on streaming (the CRTC has been making these kinds of noises for a long time).  If I decided to go after revenue, as an example, I'd be propelled into another level of streaming licensing fees and reporting, one into which I do not want to venture.  Hence, I decided to take advantage of Canada's more liberal copyright laws regarding older musical performances and songs.  I really like this stuff, and I'm learning a lot in the entire process of doing the research (which is the ultimate goal, at least for me, in the first place).  The history of early blues and jazz is very rich, with a lot of interesting characters.

It took the Rolling Stones to get people in the USA to listen to Blues on the radio.

I've used a program called Balabolka to which I had heard about from the makers of Zara Radio software. I also use the plugin Microsoft Speech platform within Balabolka. The program will read the text on the screen in a voice of my choice, male or female.

I also have put together professional sounding mp3 files that tell the time in hour and minutes, such as "the time is now 6 o'clock", "the time is now 6 15", "the time is now 6 30".

Plus temperature files that say "the current temperature is 26 degrees" "the current temperature is 70 degrees" and also for the rain cloud icon in zara, I have sound files that say "the relative humidity is 70 percent" "the relative humidity is 60 percent"

I'll have to look into it, but there was a program I tried as a trial program that worked along with zara radio and automatically updated the weather mp3 file with new weather from weather underground for your chosen location.

If I did not delete the email I got some time ago, I might be able to piece back to what program it was and how the program worked and if it is still available.

If anyone is interested in more info as to how all this works, please let me know and I'll share this with you.

Bruce.

Mr. Bruce, the ALPB is looking for people to present "How To Demonstrations" regarding radio projects for the information of Part 15 stations.

I am sure your presentation on using the artificial voice software would be well received.

I would sure like to hear more about it.

Also, maybe Artisan would consider demonstrating his method as well.

Carl Blare Said:

Mr. Bruce, the ALPB is looking for people to present "How To Demonstrations" regarding radio projects for the information of Part 15 stations.

I am sure your presentation on using the artificial voice software would be well received.

MrBruce Said:

Not to take over another person's topic, I would be willing to do that, I would have to speak with Bob Marm1500 about hosting the audio files for public download, so that you can use them on your own station. I will also like to credit the sites that provided the original files, that became my finished product. The time files were originally broken up into "the time is" then added "ten" then "twelve' then "O'clock" I stitched all 4 files together to say "The time is now ten twelve o'clock" I created a file for every hour and every minute as 'one' file with the proper name Zara radio acknowledges as a time file. I did the same with the temperature files and the relative humidity files. There is one file for each temperature level and the same for each humidity level. I used an audio editing software to stitch each file together as a complete sentence.

I would be willing to share those finished files for everyone to use on their own station, plus directions for how to get Zara Radio to play out those files at a pre-determined time.

As for Balabolka text to speech software, the link to download is still active and the software is FREE.

I will share that now, the url is Http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

Bruce.

I took a quick look at the link.  Does the software have a command line interface - that was one of the main reasons for choosing Alive Text to Speech and it's necessary for automation (I generate the speech files 'on the fly').

ArtisanRadio Said:

Does the software have a command line interface - that was one of the main reasons for choosing Alive Text to Speech and it's necessary for automation (I generate the speech files 'on the fly').

MrBruce Said:

YES, if you download the program and read the included CONTENTS file under "HELP" in the main program menu it says " Balabolka accepts the parameters at the command line...etc etc.

There is a lot of command type letters such as -C  A few examples are below.

-C voice_name = choose voice and read clipboard aloud

-m run minimized

-r file name = open file and read aloud from the beginning

I am reading the contents file on a different computer and can not copy and paste it in the post. I am also having issues making this post make sense with all my typos.

Quote from the download page: "Balabolka is a Russian word, it can be translated as "chatterer"

Bruce.

Gentlemen, Artisan and MrBruce, I'm going to follow this business of artificial voices, I love the concept and have not explored it very much.

Back in another time when Amiga computers powered our audio/video business there was an inbuilt computer voice that I tinkered with, but things have come a long way since then.

Oh, and I maintain a news column on another forum site and will post the news of Artisan's Relaunch.